I came across this very thought provoking blog post by Brain Aker of MySQL and /. fame. I think he raises some very important points about OSS development and how to create a successful new project. However some of the advice can also be applied retroactively to existing projects. I especially find his comments regarding "old boys clubs" important. Sometimes when you have a successful project it becomes hard to manage the influx of new people. So the old boys start to feel most comfy when they ignore the new guys. Patches are a good basis (though you still need people to have a look at the patches) of judgement to let new guys in. After all with good patches the project should be moving forward. I think in PHP we have a very similar policy to the "Three Commits, Ding, Ding, Ding" policy Brain applies. And that is a good thing.

Well we are all quite excited about what's going on with MySQL AB. We have read the talk about MySQL 6.0 and the upcoming Falcon storage engine. We have read the news about SUN having bought up MySQL AB and how this is going to improve their abilities. We also took note about Monty's first blog posts and the announcement of the Maria storage engine. But in the middle of this, I wonder if the priorities are sorted properly.

We just had an internal discussion about if sticking with PHP limits your career options. And just now (coincidence?) I noticed blog posts in the PHP and MySQL community noting similar concerns. The issue is that there is simply not enough top qualified talent that knows LAMP well enough to hire. Or maybe its just too hard to find them? It seems all the good guys are already hired. As a result companies end up looking for other technology, not because they actually believe that these technologies are any better or worth the license fees that these usually require to be paid up ..

As many of you know I am not very fond of the entire CLA idea. However as of late there have been some incorrect assertions around the entire CLA proposal, which I want to correct before people waste more time on the wrong arguments against the CLA proposal. I will have some better arguments against it at the end of this blog post.

The following is essentially a repost of what I send to the PDO list. However I felt that since I have discussed this topic extensively on my blog before, I should also put this on my blog. Also it might be a slightly calmer reply than what others have posted. Finally after weeks of waiting we now have a proposal on the table of how the likes of IBM, Oracle and Microsoft feel that they could become code contributors to PDO. I agree we should see this as an opportunity. Getting new people on board is always a good thing (tm). I have read through the CLA and the critical issues I personally had with the Apache (as well as ZF and eZ) CLAs have been reworded in a way I think is much closer to something I would sign. That being said, it still going to be a problem for many of us who work for larger organizations, that do have a patent portfolio (Yahoo, Amazon etc.). Also the simple fact that people need to sign something before they get started has a significant burden (especially since there are items in there like #7, which put a perpetual burden on the contributor).